Written By Krishna on Monday, June 11, 2012 | 6:53 AM

Barely 4.5 per cent of India’s e-waste gets recycled due to absence of proper infrastructure, legislation and framework for disposing off electronic gadgets and products that have reached the dead-end, says a study. The study by apex industry body Assocham released on the occasion of World Environment Day noted that growing at a compounded annual growth rate of about 20 per cent, India generates more than 4.4 lakh tons of e-waste annually and almost half of all the unused and end-of-life electronic products lie ideally in landfills, junkyards and warehouses.

The government is planning to study the consumption pattern of electronic equipment in the country in order to decide targets for their manufacturers on the minimum volume of e-waste — discarded electronic material — they are supposed to get collected from consumers in a year and then get them recycled, as directed by the new e-waste rules that came into force in May. According to a set of new guidelines, still being fine-tuned by the Central Pollution Control Board (cpcb), each category of products will have a different target for its manufacturers, based on the study of the consumption-cum-disposal pattern.

Most of us often face a situation where the cellphone we use becomes obsolete thanks to a newer technology emerging. When we give in to this, how many of us really worry about what happens to the older gadget? More often than not, such electronic waste is thrown into dustbins. This problem of e-waste generation and its subsequent disposal is now seen as a global occurrence. The United Nations Environment Programme states that 50 million metric tonnes of e-waste are generated worldwide every year. Other surveys suggest that there will be 10 million tonnes increase in total e-waste generation by 2015 given the penchant to upgrade computers, phones and TVs regularly.